♪ theme ♪ cenk: welcome to "the young turks." we have a great show. you remember governor of louisiana? he ran for president got up to 7%. it turns out there's a problem with money in politics. a really amazing story about the explosion in west, texas. the amount of material they had that could explode was crazy. turns out we need more regulation. first, we start with other

unfortunately messy situations, including the ricin attack against the president within senator roger wicker and a judge, turns out we had the wrong guy. released today kevin paul curtis has been released. he might have been framed. isn't this fascinating? >> over the weekend agents searched his home and car and ex-wife's house. they found no trace of ricin or anything used to make it. computers were seized. investigators found no data pertaining to the poison. cenk: bowing air force base got a letter with ricin today, so obviously it couldn't have been curtis who sent it, because he was until today under supervision. it's fascinating. we don't know who has done this. it gives you insight about how you shouldn't prejudge things. fascinating turn of events there. when we talk about things that

are interesting, boy have we got interesting news on boston, as well. let me go to a story from investigative correspondent brian ross on what might have motivated the brothers into the bombing in boston. >> as to inspiration authorities say stoke car said they were following preachings of an american born jihadist. >> it appears to the older brother was particularly influenced. >> despite his family ties and trips to checney. >> the americans were can i go muslims through its wars in afghanistan and iraq. cenk: mark thompson in the house. host of the edge. he's won several emmys from what i hear.

noah and leslie rice from the nation. it's a great panel. great to have you all here. mark, let me start with the ricin attack. prejudging people and declare them guilty. >> what authorities did in boston was an amazing bit of sleuthing done there, but clearly the rush to judgment reminds me of the richard jewell case. it's so reminiscent of it, although jewel lived a greater longer nightmare. cenk: on a different count they went into his house. they searched everything he had. there's like there is no traces of ricin. you would have traces to put them together. the guy's bipolar, used to be a janitor. they seem to be some what on it now. >> he's the guy in a b. movie who you suspect would be involved but in this case, it's

real life. it's unclear as to why they were on the trail of him to begin with, cenk. cenk: so, he had been sending letters saying, you know, i'm casey and i approve this message, basically threatening letters to congress, including roger wicker, the senator. the ricin letters had the same thing, so everyone immediately thought it was him. he might have been been framed. you always hear every defendant i'm framed, i didn't do it. turns out well in this case, maybe. let me turn to the boston bombings too. speaking of influences, as brian ross said in that at-bats story apparently tamerlan had a couple of influences. one was a convert to islam named misha. he used to go to info wars, alex jones is going bliss system on that now a false flag on top of a false flag.

is it relatives who influenced him? what's your take on it? >> they should be looking into lieu influenced tamerlan. more than likely we'll find that he may have had overseas influences. he spent six months in 2012 in russia and came back and created at least three functioning explosive devices. from what we understand, he learned from an on line magazine an al-qaeda linked publication, but how many people know how to put together an eye kia piece of furniture from the directions, let alone make a functioning explosive device. i wouldn't be surprised to find he had some training with the handling of explosives overseas. cenk: we don't know yet. it's speculation. i'm against all the warrantless wiretapping, et cetera, but

there is one candidate for tracking it's people who read "inspire" magazine, radical muslims to attack, i'd track that one but that's just me. all right so now i want to go to clip a37 here. i want to play this clip from fox news. he's going to blame most muslims for it. i want your reaction. let's watch it together. >> what do hacks do when they're wrong about terror? they cling to relativism. muslim extremism is no different than other extremism but to make it stick you've got to suck at math. muslim versus christian extremism is comparing hurricane katrina to a squirt begun which is why they embrace root causes to attach the response to evil. a lot of people don't fit in and still don't blow people up. we don't all wage jihad when

we're sad. >> leslie, what say you? >> i'm not quite sure what he was saying, except that he's saying more muslims commit terror than white christians here. i don't know how you -- it depends on definitions again. in many ways, we can say it was terrorism what happened in aurora and in newtown. if we're talking about weapons of mass destruction a gun that can shoot that many roundses and kill that many people in seconds, is that terrorism too? i think he's mixing apples and oranges and grapes. i'm not quite sure what he's saying here. >> some are saying the fact that they were muslim is not at all relevant. i don't agree. listen obviously tamerlan was influenced by his interpretation of fundamentalist islam right? on the other hand, what are you

supposed to do about it. bob beckel said let's not allow student visas. there are 75,000 students that come in, only five ever linked to terrorist attacks. those are some pretty bad numbers if you want to disdiscriminate. what are you supposed to do with that knowledge? >> before we establish what we're to do to prevent future incidents like the boston bombing, we have to firmly establish whether this was a terror-related incident, or livinged to al-qaeda. once we establish that, then we'll be ail to determine what the appropriate response is. right now we're in this gray area where it looks like there may have been something of a loan wolf somewhat inspired by terror-related individuals or publications, so we have to first firmly establish that this is not an attack related to an organization that may have

ordered this. cenk: all right. now, i want to turn to one other thing before we run out of time. it's rand paul. i'm kind of stunned by this hypocrisy. other guys say look, i'm a liberal but stand with rand paul in his filibuster on the drone issue, we shouldn't have filibusters. then he said something amazing. i want to play a124 guys here. >> i've never argued against technology being used when you have an eminent threat, an active crime going on. if someone comes out of a liquor store with a weapon and $50 in cash, i don't care if a drone kills him or a policeman kills him, but it's different if they want to come fly over your hot tub or yard just because they want to do surveillance on everyone and they want to watch your activities. cenk: all right, that's it, i officially withdraw all of my support on that issue from and powell. mark that's what they use drones for. >> if they're flying over your

hot tub on the way to the liquor store to get the guy they're doing two things at one time. i don't see the upside of this whole drone situation. i mean, it's crazy. it's the abridgment of more civil rights which we've seen in this country on the war on terror now with a grandness that you can't contain. you can't roll this stuff back. i think it's really of great great concern here. cenk: i totally agree with you. leslie, let me go to you on that. it almost seems rand paul is saying oh, no, i meant don't use drones on me, but if a kid that's walking out of a liquor store and robbed it, let's just kill him drop a drone on him? isn't that crazy and doesn't that basically ruin his earlier point on the filibuster? >> it is crazy. i mean, it's just shoot first drone first and ask questions later. it's yes it does seem to hurt

his point during his filibuster, which, when you narrow it down, it sounds like he really was saying don't drone us, don't drone me doing my private thing because i'm, you know, vaguely libertarian and have my right to do what i want whenever i want, but do it for the guys that you already prejudge as guilty. that, of course, includes the people in, innocent people in pakistan and afghanistan who are being killed and live in terror of the drones, even when they're not shooting, because they can hover, they can come down at any point. even tom brokaw was saying the other day that that is something we have to look into as a cause of terrorism is this continuing dirty war with our drones, and making so many enemies. cenk: i don't know if i'm going to agree with brokaw, but he was right about that. of course bill riley flipped out

over it. i'm really curious to your opinion, you're our resident conservative. is rand paul hypocritical here? >> he's talking about the immediate threat to liberty or life or property. in a law enforcement situation and military situation, you can use violent deadly force in that moment. what he was talking about in the filibuster and still today is the ability to define an eminent threat to be anytime anywhere you want and to drop full circle back to the original subject an american citizen of a drone strike was deemed to be an immediate imminent threat, could have been tomorrow, a month from now, three years from now. cenk: wait, i need clarity on that. would you put him in an eminent threat category? >> i'm not necessarily describing to what rand paul is saying, but he's consistent saying an imminent threat could

mean we need to take action immediately. it doesn't mean we need to take action next month because that's not eminent. cenk: agree to disagree. noah's wrong on this one. you can't use drones on u.s. citizens in america. that's crazy talk, what rand paul was originally saying. now it seems he's saying well, i mean even taking noah's point well if it's kind of imminent, then go for it. no, totally unacceptable, but we appreciate your opinion nonetheless, noah, that's why we have you on the panel. when we come back, west, texas a terrible explosion killed so many more people than boston, but not a lot of attention paid to it. wait until you find out the stunning numbers behind it. we'll come back and tell you that. guys that do reverse mortgage commercials? those types are coming on to me all the time now. (vo) she gets the comedians laughing and the thinkers thinking. >>ok, so there's wiggle room in the ten commandments, that's what you're saying. you would rather deal with

ahmadinejad than me. >>absolutely. >> and so would mitt romney. (vo) she's joy behar. >>and the best part is that current will let me say anything. what the hell were they thinking?

>> if you believe in state's rights but still support the drug war you must be high. >> "viewpoint" digs deep into the issues of the day. >> do you think that there is any chance we'll see this president even say the words "carbon tax"? >> with an open mind... >> has the time finally come for real immigration reform? >> ...and a distinctly satirical point of view. >> but you mentioned "great leadership" so i want to talk about donald rumsfeld. >> (laughter). >> watch the show. >> only on current tv.

[ explosion ] >> are you ok? >> i can't hear. i can't hear. get out of here, please get out of here. >> oh, my god! >> please get out of here! cenk: that was the explosion in west texas at a fertilizer planted. 14 people were killed, unfortunately and more than 160 injured, and dozens of buildings were destroyed. when you compare to boston, which was another horrible tragedy, three killed and 176 people injured although i've seen now numbers as high as 250 for people who went to the hospital, so more people killed in the west, texas explosion. when you look at the number of workplace accidents and deaths, specifically that number is actually stunning compared to the terrorist killings. 4,609 americans killed in the workplace in just 2011. in that same year, 17 americans

killed by terrorists. when you look at the specific plant in west, texas, get a load of these numbers. 1,350 times the legally allowed amount of ammonium nitrate. that is gigantic and that's why the explosion was horrific. they had 270 tons there, to give you a sense of how bad that is, the oklahoma city bombing had two tons, brought down the whole building. they had 270 tons, new sprinklers, fire alarms, shut off valves or blast walls. that is a disaster. we bring in our panel. cenk: i'm thinking of moth man

prophecies. this is a serious issue. we had a discussion before on regulations, et cetera. as we look at these numbers you think how much more damage it causes these work injuries cause, and my god, do we need more regulation in that case to make sure they didn't have all these chemicals. osha hadn't been there in years. >> you identified the day that this happened, and it's been subsequently reported that they were fined by the e.p.a. for having inadequate transportation plan and they paid a little more than half the 10 grand fined. that was in 2011. they had gone without an inspection for a long time before that. there's a whole bunch of accidents that have a large body count associated with them, but

those are prohibited by regulations. they need to be enforced. they are already on the books. cenk: i'll take it. you are saying we need to enforce the regulations. i'll take it. you look at how exclosive this is. >> the danger is disproportionate, so if they did enforce it what happens? they write a check. that's what's happening. a lot of regulations essentially government agencies are looking the other way. we see this across the board in agriculture. this is a very dramatic and horrible example of what happens over time. cenk: that's really interesting. leslie, there was a fascinating piece in the washington post today saying look, when it's terrorism, we reward the terrorists who do it for the attention by constantly focusing on it and putting this enormous spotlight, terrorism terrorism when you have workplace injuries that result in so many more tatties, corporations don't want

you to look and we reward them by not looking into it. is that a pretty good point? >> yes. i mean, terrorism and we have a great example here, it makes celebrities out of these people, not positive celebrities necessarily, but it makes them -- it focuses on the individual like we always do in dramas. it's a great t.v. movie that we've just been through and the second season is still to come. in these workplace accidents and in food poisoning accidents whether we have enough regulations and whether we have enough enforcement is we don't have enough money there constantly being cut down and sequestered out of existence and there's not enough people to go around to enforce these things. that works with the overall corporate goal, which is to not draw attention to all its malfeasance and all the way it cuts corners and a colleague of

mine wrote a wonderful piece this week comparing west, texas and newtown and boston situations. he says who's the villain. in boston, it's terrorism, more or less, the terrorists. who's the villain in accidents where many more people die? is it capitalism? is it profit? is it the desire to lower taxes and cut regulations? when it's an economic argument, it's just hard tore point fingers, but they want us to not point fingers. they want us to forget about that. >> that's exactly right. it was a great who done it that was going on at the same time that this horrible tragedy was being played out across texas. because it was a who done it and involved terrorism it had dynamics that we just love. i mean, it really was as is suggested, a kind of movie of the week. having said that, i think your

points are very, very good one. even in the vacuum of an empty newsweek i wonder if they really would have hung the responsibility for this fertilizer disaster on corporate america, and because this is an institutionalized, they're ignoring this on an institutional basis. 1985 is the last time this plant was inspected. that's reprehensible. cenk: we passed a bill about making sure miners had better safety. over 350 people a year died in mining accidents. now we've got to down to about 11 people a year. when they tell you regulation doesn't matter, don't believe the hype. it's not true. history proves -- you can't have over regulation either, but history proves reasonable regulation saves lives. but noah, i got to ask you one last quick thing. leslie mentioned the funding. now we've got texas legislators senator ted cruz and bill flores a congressman who voted

against aid for sandy now turning around saying gimme gimme for west, texas. >> as long as the bill doesn't include funding for alaskan fisheries. the probable he had was miss directed funding. my panel guests said earlier, i would never characterize what happened in boston as a television movie. this was premeditated murder. what happened in texas was an accident. we don't understand what happened it may have been negligence borderline criminal negligence but it wasn't murder. >> i would suggest that you're absolutely right there's a huge distinction. i'm trying to explaining that the media noise made by a premeditated act and hunt for that person or persons who actually premeditated that act makes for a story line and for that reason, it took the

attention of our media and world away from the texas disaster. cenk: i'll double down more on that. if we concentrate our time media wise or more importantly government-wise trying to fix things on deaths that happen in workplaces with important and reasonable regulation, we'd be much better served. we'd save so many more lives. >> the thing about criminal negligence do filter into the public consciousness. you had mentioned that and last week michael shure mentioned negligence that resulted in significant changes to public policy. when you have actual criminality that you can prove, it does get the attention that it deserves. it's an accident. cenk: i know, but everything calls everything an accident, like we had the miners who died in utah, and oh, yeah, no big deal, then we got no legislation, just an accident. in media matters, you know why

we got that? because walter con kite went to the scene of a mining accident for four straight days in the middle of nowhere in the middle of winter and started talking about how these poor families had gone through this and guess what, we got legislation the very next year, and that helped tremendously, but we don't have the media doing that anymore. that's part of the problem. we've got to take a break but there's going to be more heat and passion when we come back. "young turks." (vo) no one brings you more documentaries that are real, gripping, current.

you know who is coming on

to me now? you know the kind of guys that do reverse mortgage commercials? those types are coming on to me all the time now. (vo) she gets the comedians laughing and the thinkers thinking. >>ok, so there's wiggle room in the ten commandments, that's what you're saying. you would rather deal with ahmadinejad than me. >>absolutely. >> and so would mitt romney. (vo) she's joy behar. >>and the best part is that current will let me say anything. what the hell were they thinking? cenk: we're back on "the young turks." we've got a controversial title for you now is obama weak? oh damn, it might not even be controversial at this point. let me bring back the panel. check out his show immediately. no after the show, no tonight.

leslie saver from the nation and noah. president obama, of course, lost the battle on background checks on gun control and wondering if he didn't pressure conservatives enough. new york times writes: cenk: i find it hard to argue with that. let's continue. they also say. cenk: leslie, i find all those to be excellent questions. >> they are it's a continual frustration that we have with obama. he talks a good game, he's

inspiring on many different issues. i remember when he put up the proposal for jobs and infrastructure spending in 2011 and he went out and campaigned for it and then dropped it. it wasn't going to happen and he didn't twist arms, and he didn't push for it. this happens over and over again. i'm not privy, a lot of us are not to what really does go on behind closed doors but if a lot of this reporting is correct, then, you know, why doesn't he get a fire lit under his butt by now? it's very frustrating. cenk: because it's not about him. during the election, he was a lion. man, he tore mitt romney's face off, but when it's issues that aren't, you know, not necessarily related to his own personal career, not as much. >> cenk, that is exactly the

thing that i find the most confusing about obama. here's a guy who during the election, he can run the new kind of campaign, exist in the new politics, he can get the dirty story told and also be the orator and be clean clean as a whistle up top. so he can do it all during the campaign, and then he wins the presidency. then to get it done, to push through legislation that has this kind of overwhelming popular support, he can't get it done. it's crazy to me. cenk: it's a matter of priorities mark, i'm telling you. it's the top priority for him to win, for himself personally, right? but the background check i think is a bit of an exception. i think he really did want that for his so-called legacy, as weak as i thought it was. everything else, you want me to water it down, keep 94 of the bush tax cuts and make them permanent? as long as i can take down 6% and call it historic tax increase on the rich, i'll take it.

financial reform, i don't really want to do financial reform. if i just do incredibly watered down financial reform, i'll burnish my legacy and move on. he's not a progressive. he doesn't care. >> that's right. the parade continues through guantanamo the wars, all the promises he made. he's kept virtually none of them. it's really abseen on some level. he's really let down, i understand he's let down the left but he's really let down the electorate. cenk: we try to book guests throughout our whole show and i'm telling you right now people who follow the news regularly, those progressives, it's really hard to find any of them that will support obama anymore. i say come on the show and defend obama people say hell no. it gives you an indication of where the country's going. that news is finally going to

reach the masses and they'll say what the hell did we do, what did this guy give us. noah i'm interested in your perspective as a conservative. let me show you joe scarborough on msnbc. >> this is so easy. these democrats are always saying this, because he has power over the democrats. this president has got to lean in hard, and he has got to twist arms. he's got to let every democratic know that they're on his list. i am going to drive you into the ground politically i'm going to destroy you. it is my goal to make sure that you regret that you ever came to washington d.c. until you switch your vote. cenk: what do you think about that strategy and about obama week or not overall. >> a lot of pundits and historians wonder why he doesn't

put the screws to the congressional leadership in his office every other day. a lot of people say the president release on his force of personality. if he had l.b.j.'s personality maybe he would rely on that more. i would suggest that compare the way he has campaigned on immigration reform within congress, within by bringing congressional leaders in, going having dinner diplomacy with republicans and democrats trying to hammer together a consensus on the bill and compared to how he campaigned externally on gun control and essentially harassed and harangued the individuals who he wants to vote in certain ways, which is not conducive to getting an agreement together, but then he goes out and campaigns in san francisco, on the issue of gun control and says i'm really working this. this is something that is very attractive to democratic donors, big dollar small dollar donors, but not something that he's especially interested in getting passed legislatively.

cenk: i disagree on a couple of fronts. if you tell me obama cares about the fundraising, i'm likely to agree with that. but if all he cared about was the politics, he wouldn't want immigration reform and he'd pin it on the republicans and kick their ass in the 2014 elections and maybe even further right? >> if you can pass immigration reform, you have a much broader pool of voters able to support you, a much broader pool of support that you're going to get from the immigrant community and the people who have immigrants around them who would appreciate that. gun control is not necessarily going to yield an extra vote for anybody. cenk: i think that's totally wrong. 91% in favor of background checks, i think it's a weird situation, because it would be fair to president obama i think he tried hard on this one but he didn't get it done, partly because he's so used to only

carrots, no sticks. noah him campaigning across the country was his idea of a stick i'm going to go use the bully pulpit, et cetera. you also got to pull aside democrats and say if you did he havify me on this, i'm going to come for you in a very big way and obama just doesn't have that in him for whatever reason, right? all right, we've got to leave it right there. mark thompson, noah rothman leslie, thank you so much for joining us. when we come back, we've got a lot to talk about including the a.p. got hacked and what did that result? one tweet crashed the whole market. we'll tell you about that and what was the response and why when we come back. >> but you mentioned "great leadership" so i want to talk about donald rumsfeld. >> (laughter). >> watch the show. >> only on current tv.

very, very excited about that and very proud of that. >>beltway politics from inside the loop. >>we tackle the big issues here in our nation's capital, around the country and around the globe. >>dc columnist and four time emmy winner bill press opens current's morning news block. >>we'll do our best to carry the flag from 6 to 9 every morning. this show is about being up to date, staying in touch with everything that is going on politically and putting my own nuance on it. in reality it's not like they actually care. this is purely about political grandstanding.

cenk: welcome to the u block. we've got our digital guru producer here. we're going to discuss what happened to the associated press. there was a hack into their twitter account shana. breaking news, two explosions in the white house and barack obama is injured. that was not true, of course. jay carney had to come out and say this. >> twitter account has been hacked, so anything that was just tweeted out about any incident in the white house can you clarify that. >> i can say that the president was fine. i was just with him. cenk: so, all right thanks, god, nothing actually happened.

here is one thing that did happen, the market crashed immediately. now, let's show you the cart, a drop of 150 points and then as you can see once they got the news nothing occurred, it came back up, but there was seven minutes in there in which some people could have made a ton of money. >> the syrian electronic army has taken credit for this or seems to. it wasn't about exploiting a market opportunity although it was a long seven minutes for some people, but being able to make a political point this is a group that is pro the existing regime in syria so they are using a lot of tactics better no one for supporting the syrian rebels. cenk: that's interesting, the syrian government is connected to the iranian government. are they dipping their toe in the water to what mayhem they can cause? >> it is hard to see who is behind anonymous attacks. i have no idea whether the

iranian government might be involved. i do think that the escalation in syria particularly possibility of chemical weapons used last week, which israel did say happened, the u.s. says not sure, it seems like the kinds of attacks the syrian electronic army are making are getting bigger and bolder. they are deliberately spreading really scary misinformation and with it, hacking we talk a lot about it. sometimes there's good ways that hacking can help expose things. this is a situation where it was fun and games until people were convinced that the president might have gotten hurt. cenk: that is what i agree to be a really interesting topic in question. we're against this, or at least i am, and i'm curious about your thoughts too much intrusion into our private lives. where do you draw the line to find out what the syrians are doing. >> there are questions surrounding national security that are legitimate here for

this organization or in general. no, i mean, i'm opposed to it, we don't want that level of intrusion, but i think basic law enforcement and the ability to figure out where these attacks are coming from is a basic thing we need to be doing. cenk: west borough baptist church was hacked. what happened there? >> they basically made a new page and convinced everyone that that's who it was. i think we've got some cute picture, they have been posting messages of love and acceptance. what if we all love each other. cenk: good forbid. that's what west borough baptist would literally think. hacking for good purposes. >> yes. cenk: all right, thank you so much shana we appreciate it. thank you all for watching the u block. we'll be right back.

cenk: here's what people don't like to hear, but it's an unfortunate, absolute reality. on a national level, we have lost our democracy. it does not exist. [ applause ] cenk: that attractive young gentleman was speaking, that was a conference about how we have to get money out of politics. in fact, it is destroying republicans, democrats real voters in this country not the politicians. one politician who does not love it is governor buddy roamer, a former congressman and republican from louisiana. he's a republican that ran in the primaries. they didn't allow him into any of the debates because he was against big money. he's formed a reform project. i got to sit down with him and talk to him.

>> governor, tell me the difference between when you ran as governor. i'm interested in how the political landscape has changed. you ran for president. >> money's always an important thing in politics. you're not going to change that, but over time, it's gotten out of balance. it's become so important that it's everything. for example, when i ran for governor, i was a lowly congressman, not yet 40, young energetic, believed in louisiana's potential but other people ran who had qualifications and we had seven televised state-wide debates. i did well in the debates. i liked them. i liked the fire and the passion, and i ran away with the

election. it was a total surprise to people. i only raised about a million and a half dollars the other people spent $8 million, $10 million, money doesn't really win in oh politics, but if you can get in people's living rooms through television. the trouble now is that unless you raise the money first you can't get on the debates. i ran for president two years ago. now, there were other decent people running. i won't put them down, but i was the only person running who had been elected a congressman and a governor. i had worked in d.c. in the system and i'd worked in baton rouge, the state capitol of louisiana. i knew politics and i thought i might bring something to the debate. mitt romney only served four years in political office, all in massachusetts. he didn't know washington. other people served at governor, like tim pawlenty who had never served in washington.

it was some, about half the candidates hat washington experience the other half state experience but i was the only candidate that had both. do you know i didn't get invited to a single national debate? there were seven eight, 10 people running and you would think they would have tried a former governor, former congressman, a successful businessman, but i was not invited, so i would call and say could i get on this debate? i need the exposure, and they would say well governor, we'd love to have you because we heard you are a fierce debater but you don't have 2% of the national poll, so i said let me work on that, so i did. i got to 2%. i called again and i said gallup poll has me at 2%. they say well it's 3% now. so another couple of weeks would go by, i'd call. here's what they finally told me. governor, you haven't raised a half a million dollars in the

last 30 days. i said well, i've raised $365,000, $100 is the maximum limit for me, and i take no pack money and no super pac. they said our rule now is that you have to raise a half million dollars in 30 days. american politics, unlike 25 years ago has gotten where money is the most important thing. there's nothing wrong with washington that can't be fixed. it's not broken. it's bought. look i'm not a plot and paranoid kind of guy. i like the fact that we have 100 channels to choose from. i like the fact that you have a presence in the media of america and it's not driven by money it's driven by hard work, isn't it? but at the top it's driven by money, and if you were to have a populace candidate like me, who's won a lot of elections when they let him on the stapling, the best way to whip

buddy roemer is no to the let him get on the stage. i think that decision was made early and off seven. cenk: he has a really interesting point. the fact that he was a republican makes it more powerful. look what he told about you have to raise $500,000. we don't care about anything else. you tell me herman cain was a more serious candidate than a former governor and congressman? it's basically the republican party saying you must be bought, otherwise we won't allow you in the debate. how can we fix the system? he had ideas on that, too. >> i don't care who the next president is. i care that the next president loves america, and works for its people. that's what i care about and i think the thing between me and that goal is special interest money. that's who runs washington. cenk: how do you fight back, and is there any hope for winning against this incredibly powerful

force? >> we're going to win. it won't be about me, it will be about us. we're going to win. we're going to change the is itment. that's why the strikers are meeting here in northern california and i've been invited to make a small presentation and be part of it. i wanted to come listen anyway. i've learned a lot. there's not one way to do this. it could be constitutional, statutory, a combination of both but there's a group of us, eight or 10 of us around the country, and i have more political experience than the other seven or eight but we're all committed like larry lesek as harvard and others, we're committed to coming up with different ways to get this achieved and then coming together finally with a plan, a solution, but here's what's missing. the american people are missing. i think they're overwhelmed with this money and they, most americans don't think they can do anything.

most americans don't think they can make a difference. i'm telling you. if we can get 5 million americans to give $100 to a candidate younger than me, better looking than me, whatever, 5 million americans to give $100, we can elect a president. final point, the average american gives nothing but complains for four years about the quality of the government. i'm trying to turn it around. give a little, and you can change the system. five to 10 million americans give a little, watch out america. we'll have a theodore roosevelt elected, who said 100 years ago he told the republican party who are we going to be? are we going to represent wall street and those who have, or are we going to represent the

small business, the police officers, the guys that build the roads? that's where i want to be. that's where america needs to be. cenk: he's such a breath of fresh air on the republican side. that's why they didn't want him on the stage. look the one thing i think is you do give money, but not to the parties not to the candidates, to groups that are trying to give you real change in the system. i believe one group is wolfpack. wolf-pack.com. get the money out of politics to involve our broken system in washington. when we come back, one final point for you guys. >> only on current tv.